Dr. Katie B. Garner

Today’s question:

Brief Biography

Scholar. Teacher. Mother. Wife. These lines blur and intersect in my life as a first-generation woman who was raised in Chicago on the margin between working and middle class. My mother quit her job as a secretary shortly into her first pregnancy and my father worked two or more jobs as a house painter to pay our bills.

This upbringing narrowed my focus on roles of mothers (and fathers), labor equality, and feminism in a changing world. I attended Illinois Wesleyan University for my undergraduate degree and University of Illinois at Chicago for my Masters in English Education and Ph.D in English with a gender studies concentration.

After nearly a decade researching intensive mothering, globalization’s impact on childcare, and class and race as they impact the mother/nanny relationship, I am focused on shifting the conversation regarding these topics with an eye toward building political will and ultimately changing US policy.

I have been fortunate enough to be an educator at the high school level (Downers Grove South High School) and then as a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago in gender and women’s studies and currently as an adjunct professor at North Central College. I have served on editorial boards for organizations such as the Journal of Motherhood Initiative and have led several conferences focused on mothering.

My goal is to enact social change when it comes to the role of childcare and advance the national conversation about mothering.

“The Reproduction of Empathy in the Novel Terrain between Mothers and Nannies.” Motherhood and Culture conference. Maynooth University. Maynooth, Ireland. June 2015.

“Love Bi the Book: A Chodorowian Examination of Heterosexual Mothers’ Love for Nannies in Contemporary Fiction.” Maternal Subjectivities: Psychology/Psychoanalysis, Literature, Culture and the Arts. Mothering Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. Rome, Italy. April 2015.